£15 teapot is sold for a crackpot £500,000
Two-faced? I draw the line at that
MEET the cat with two faces, with one side grey and the other black.
A rare accident of birth has given the British Shorthair a perfectly symmetrical look to its face.
The striking appearance is thought to be the result of two embryos fusing together in the mother’s womb as non-identical twins.
It is believed that each side of the face has different DNA. Such odd-looking cats are known as chimeras, after a creature in Greek mythology made up of parts from several kinds of animal.
The picture was taken at the cat’s home in France by photographer Jean-Michel Labat. A CRACKED teapot with a missing lid bought for just £15 less than two years ago has sold for more than £500,000.
The key to its huge price tag is that the petite porcelain item is thought to be the only one of its kind left.
The 3in tall teapot was made in South Carolina by English craftsman John Bartlam during the 1780s, making it one of the first pieces of porcelain created in the US – “a birth-of-a-nation object”.
Bought in 2016 by an anonymous collector for £15 at an auction in Lincolnshire, it came up for a sale on Tuesday at Woolley and Wallis in Salisbury, Wilts, with an estimated sale price of £20,000.
But to the astonishment of a packed auction house, it was snapped up by a London dealer on behalf of the Metropolitan Museum in New York for £460,000 – 23 times its original estimate.
Commission will be paid on top, taking the total amount to over half a million pounds.
Only six other pieces of John Bartlam’s porcelain are known to still exist. This is the only teapot. Bartlam, a potter from Staffordshire, emigrated in the early 1760s, aiming to produce high-quality ceramics The ‘birth-of-a-nation’ US teapot is cracked and missing its lid in America and saving transportation costs.
He became the first known transatlantic manufacturer of porcelain but his enterprise was interrupted by the American Revolution and he then returned to the UK.
Ceramics specialist Clare Durham said the teapot, featuring two cranes beneath a tall palm tree on one side and a man on a bridge on the reverse in blue on a white background, was a “really significant object” for the US.
She added: “This is the first time they were producing porcelain in America in the 1760s, so it’s kind of a birth-ofa-nation object. This is them on sticking two fingers up at England, saying, ‘We don’t need to import your porcelain, we can make it ourselves’.
“It does look insignificant and it has been passed over several times in its life but luckily we’ve recognised it.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art instructed British antiques expert Roderick Jellicoe to buy it on its behalf.
Mr Jellicoe, who specialises in 18th-century porcelain, said: “It is very rare for something to be discovered like this these days. It’s incredible that it has turned up like this.
“This teapot is a very important part of American history and is a national treasure.”